


suffer the little children

by namelessdeer



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (that's where the dimileth is as well), Angst, Angst and Fluff, Dissociation, Gen, Gender-Neutral My Unit | Byleth, Hallucinations, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Other, Post-Canon, Post-Timeskip, Pre-Timeskip, Shared Trauma, dimitri and war orphans, dimitri centric, fair bit of, i apologize in advance for chapter 2 y'all, the fluff is in ch4, yknow just general warnings for the inside of dimitri's head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 17:46:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20821313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namelessdeer/pseuds/namelessdeer
Summary: Dimitri does not consider himself to be good with children. The exception is that he has always had an incorrigible affinity with orphans.(i. Garreg Mach, 1180 / ii. Faerghus, 1182 / iii. Garreg Mach, 1185 / iv. Fhirdiad, 1187)





	1. i. Garreg Mach, 1180

**Author's Note:**

> This took WAY longer than it should have, first because I was uncertain writing Dimitri's voice, then because college thoroughly trounced my ass for two weeks. Anyway, I feel like the pacing here is awkward, and it's clunky, and I've stared at it so long I can't tell if it's good so I'm just throwing it out there and hoping this is something someone else wanted to see.
> 
> This all started because I talked to that random Knight of Seiros who said he saw feral!Dimitri pat a war orphan on the head and I was like "oh god... oh fuck" and knew I would have to write something. And then I was like "if I had pre timeskip it would hurt more". And then I was like "but how would mid timeskip Dimitri react??" and then my dimileth did a hit on me and now here we are.

Dimitri does not consider himself to be good with children. Although at seventeen he is technically speaking a child himself, it has been a small eternity since it has ocurred to him to think of himself that way.

Children - small, bright, happy things - are breakable. And he is so very good at breaking things. He becomes stiff and awkward and painfully careful, until something occurs to spare him from the interaction.

There are, however, exceptions to this. He has an incorrigible affinity with orphans. Invariably they produce a strange and compelling twist of empathy in a part of his heart he thought had gone dead.

(This is not, strictly speaking, true; it is a part of his heart he _wishes_ had gone dead.)

It's something, he thinks, about their eyes. The dazed look as if they've been hit over the head, or the shrewd distance that never quite fully goes away. A certain deadness. A certain heartbreakingly prescient awareness.

(Dimitri remembers very little about the six months directly following the Tragedy of Duscur. He is told that it frequently became difficult to discern whether he was sleepwalking or awake; that he developed a frankly alarming habit of screaming at nothing.)

More than all this, however, they seem to trust him: these small creatures who have given up trusting anything. He has not yet decided if this is because he is particularly transparent to them, or because they have particularly misinterpreted him. (He has not decided which is the more unsettling option, yet.)

All of this is to say that he has, as of recently, been coerced into spending many of his afternoons taking a gaggle of roughly eight recently orphaned wards of the monastery through the paces of basic swordplay.

(This is another lie to himself. He went into it earnestly and almost entirely unaware of what he was doing until after he had agreed, because faced with such children he is as helpless to resist giving in to their pleas as if he is being tugged along on a silver cord.)

People, in general, if they notice this about him, seem to regard it as endearing rather than recognizing any of it as the dilemma it is. Because Dimitri, after all, is not allowed such distractions. The unfamiliar warmth he feels at his pupils' stubborn diligence and unearned trust - the startling gleam of contentment at a job well done and a job worth doing - it is all so uncomfortable that by the end of the lesson he often feels that he has merely been watching himself interact with the children rather than experiencing it himself.

He has to take a moment, afterwards, to stare at his hands. To reacquaint himself with them and the blood that stains them.

He is a couple of weeks in when the ghosts grow restless and decide to make their feelings on the matter clear.

He is about ten minutes in, reaching over to show one of the children a steadier grip on her blunt training sword, when there is a sharp spike of pain at his temple and a familiar voice growls, _How selfish._

He falters. Freezes.

_How do you think we will ever be able to rest,_ Glenn goes on sneeringly, _if you fritter away your time with things like this?_

Dimitri very carefully does not look behind him. He does not know what he will see. It has been a while since the ghosts have appeared to him during the day. He does not know if it would be worse to acknowledge Glenn or not to. He does not know if he has the luxury not to.

"Mister?" The child's eyes are wide and concerned. "Mister, are you okay?"

_Yes, and you know you destroy everything you touch,_ his stepmother chides over his other shoulder. _How careless of you, putting yourself anywhere near them._

His hand - hovering over the girl's on the hilt of the sword, about to touch. He snatches it back as though burned, appalled at the mistake he was about to make.

"Mister! What's wrong?"

The girl reaches a hand out to _him_, and he takes a large step back, and is abruptly aware that every set of eyes is trained on him. The spring light, a moment ago so warm and inviting, is suddenly harsh and unforgiving and flooding the courtyard in hyperclarity.

_Remember what you are,_ his father rumbles.

"I - Apologies," he manages, and coughs into his hand. "I... seem to have taken ill. Perhaps we could continue this another time?"

It is another mark of the affinity between them that there are no cries of protest, no wheedling or whining or begging. At most there is a discontented murmur. The girl, who could not be any older than ten, turns large dark eyes on him, eyes filled with a solemnity that does not come from anything so innocent as precociousness. "Feel better soon," she says, plain and sincere.

The walk back to his dormitories is very long. If he is approached by anyone he does not notice it.

He spends the rest of the evening paying a very deliberate amount of inattention to the peripherals of his vision, and the next day, he approaches the professor to ask a favor.


	2. ii. Faerghus, 1182

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I REALLY AM SORRY FOR THIS

The wind is howling.

It is night. The waning moon hangs high overhead, and what stars are visible behind the cloud cover glitter coldly. The winter of Faerghus has always had a certain stark and savage beauty. But now it means nothing to him, except the wind pierces through to his bones, and food is hard to come by, and wolves stalk the hills, whittled mean by hunger.

He is not sure, anymore, where he is trudging to or why. He has succeeded in going almost completely numb and does not know if this is from cold, or fatigue, or merely because he has willed it hard enough to be so. He knows only that he cannot stop. He puts one foot in front of the other because he knows if he collapses where he stands not only is he unsure he would get up again but it would be yet another unconscionable failure of the dead.

The wind howls. His vision hazes in and out in front of him. There is little snow this time of year in southern Faerghus but a thick rime lies over everything, rendering the world silent and brittle. If he is not careful frost will form on his lashes. The moon hangs high in the sky and he is the one moving point on the landscape.

It would be very easy to believe, he thinks, that he is the last person in Fódlan left alive.

_Keep moving,_ his father orders, at nearly the same time Glenn comments _**Are** you a person though_ with a sort of derisive snort and his stepmother purrs _Wouldn't that be fitting_ with a skeletal hand on his shoulder. Or possibly some time passed inbetween. It wouldn't be the first time things started to -

\- slip.

Ah.

He is - sitting in a village. Or less - sitting than slumped against a wall, the overhang providing some reprieve from the biting wind. He does not know how long it has been. It is still night - and it has not always been a certainty that it _is_ the same night but if he focuses, really focuses, he remembers stumbling to the rim of a valley and seeing the sparse light flickering below.

Not - not a companionable light, he realizes. Fire. His mouth tastes of ash. In the austere and frozen Faerghus night the village would have burned out harsh but quickly, like a torch lit in a vacuum, smothering for lack of air.

He was too late, then - because he knows suddenly for a certainty what his objective in coming here had been. The Imperial army has been and gone. The village has burned. It is terribly silent. The scope of the destruction is uncertain but he must have stepped over corpses to get here. Too late to be of any help - to loose the tide of blood that itches at his fingertips - to learn anything that would bring him closer to Edelgard -

_\- and what would you have done had you been sooner, what with the state you're in, weak, pathetic boy -_

A pebble clatters. He wrenches his head up to dizzying effect. A small figure freezes, disconcertingly close. They stare at him, wide-eyed. Their hair is of an indeterminate color, washed out by starlight, matted with ash and streaked with blood. They are trembling violently. Their knees are bruised. They are not in any state of dress to be out in this weather. It is -

\- a child. An orphan. He knows them by the distant, liquid, animal look in their eyes. Most likely they thought him a corpse. He shifts almost imperceptibly and they tense to flee, to vanish back into this world of devastation that is at least a known unknown but with a monumental and involuntary effort his tongue unglues from the roof of his mouth and it tears from his throat: _"Wait - "_

The sound is hoarse and painful. It has been longer than he likes to think about since his mouth last formed human words.

He does not expect the child to heed the command. He must look a beast crouched at the mouth of a den. He knows his hair is long and ragged, that his eyes are wild, that he is covered in a layer of dirt and grime and days-old blood. He is prepared for the child to run. Instead they pause and creep closer, steps cautious and wobbling and slow. A stiff wind could blow them over. It is a wonder that it hasn't already. They eye each other, two feral things.

_And what, exactly, will you do with this child?_ his stepmother demands. _You must focus. Focus. You're as likely to rip the poor thing's head off as to help._

But, for once, he does not heed her. Commanded by an impulse that feels like it must have come from another life, his fingers are already fumbling at the clasp of the cloak around his shoulders.

The child draws nearer. They are ungainly and stick-thin. Their lips look blue in the scant light.

They dart for the cloak as soon as it's free. He half expects them to disappear back into the night with it, leave him with nothing but the admonishments of the ghosts. Instead they vanish under it, a tangle of tiny limbs, until their head pops back out and, thoroughly cocooned, they scoot back against the wall and let their head fall on his shoulder.

He freezes.

He hasn't - he doesn't - he can't remember the last time he touched a human - or the other way around - without the intent to kill.

The child must have been through horrors tonight indeed, to make a beast more tempting company than the emptiness beyond.

He might have shivered for an interminable amount of time in the darkness, trying to control his breathing, trying not to move a muscle lest something go wrong, until succumbing to the draught of sleep.

Or he might have dropped abruptly and before much longer into a dead sleep of his own, too fatigued to make even an attempt at holding sentry.

There is no way to know. What matters is he sleeps. What matters is for the first time in recent memory, the ghosts are merciful; he does not dream. What matters is when he wakes to the early morning light and a small figure still nestled into his side, a tiny ember of warmth sparks in a part of his heart he was absolutely _certain_ had died by now. He shifts carefully in an attempt to rise without waking the child and they slip, fall gracelessly - like a bundle of sticks - across his lap and what matters is - what matters is -

They are not breathing.

Eyes half-lidded, lifeless.

Fingers stiff and blue.

There are very few threads of Dimitri left that have not snapped. But another goes with this. His chest splinters around the beginnings of a hysterical gale of laughter, which he forces down with difficulty. He is not sure why he bothers. The sound he makes instead is strangled and inhuman and scrapes his vocal cords raw. He may have started laughing anyway. All he knows is he threads his fingers in his hair, rocking forward, breath rasping in his lungs as the ghosts swirl about - _cannot save even a single child, all your fault could have done more the doom of everyone around you worthless useless pitiful prince I'm sorry I'm sorry I know I know I know -_

Dimitri does not extend his hand with intent to help another human being again for fully three and a half years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (is this the same cloak he has at the end of the timeskip? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯)


	3. iii. Garreg Mach, 1185

The noon sun is a harsh glare upon him as he paces restlessly in the courtyard.

"No, no, that won't work - I'll get to her, I swear to you, I just need a little more time - "

"More time." Glen huffs a humorless laugh. "You've had nearly ten years of it and yet still you ask us for _more time."_

Dimitri growls, bites the inside of his mouth hard enough to draw blood. The sharp tang of it steadies him, just a little, just enough to keep his mind from wheeling its way out of his body completely. He rounds on his heel and paces in the opposite direction again, gauntleted fists trembling uselessly at his sides. Could be from sheer force of anger; could be that he has forgotten to eat for a few days again. It's not an investigation he cares to concern himself with. Every traitorous breath he draws is a complete and utter waste if it is not taking him nearer to cleaving Edelgard's head from her shoulders.

Not for the first time he thinks, bitterly, that this would all be so much simpler if they would be appeased by his own head in its place.

He whirls, cloak flapping behind him like the wings of a great bat, and takes a step, and -

\- stumbles, skiding down heavily into the dust, an ungainly heap of armor and furs. He curses, fury flaring hot and blinding in his chest. What a disgrace - what in the eternal flames did he manage to trip over in the _first_ place - there's a scuffling in the dirt next to him as his sense of sound catches up with the rest of him, lodging in that particular place in his skull, and he finds that the scuffling is accompanied by a high-pitched flurry of pleas: "I-I-I'm sorry Your Highness I didn't mean to I didn't see you turn I - "

Dimitri blinks dumbly at the sight in front of him, a young child with bruised knees and a rabbit's eyes, dark and liquid and -

His temple throbs. Something entirely too familiar about this situation, but it's just past his comprehension. The boy falls silent, quivering, having seemingly decided that if Dimitri is going to kill him there's nothing to be done about it now.

The anger is gone, vanished somewhere out of his reach. He tries to grab it back, because the anger is always so much easier than whatever rushes in to take its place. He finds nothing but a dull and painful weight at the back of his throat, a slowly swelling ache somewhere below his sternum. The anger is simply gone, snuffed out like a candle, and he doesn't know _why_.

The boy isn't moving, as paralyzed before him as if caught in a steel trap. Dimitri's eye darts about the courtyard, a little wildly, as if something he sees there could provide him with a clue. He remembers - ash and blood in matted hair, remembers - a wooden training sword in his hands, remembers - pressing it into hands much smaller than his own inside this very courtyard - and it was a waste of time then, as it is a waste of time now, a waste of the lungs and flesh and sniew that have never belonged to him -

He gathers himself up to his knees with a slight rattle of armor, putting the boy within striking distance. He is a war orphan. The part of his brain that knows how he knows this is disconnected from the rest of him right now, but he knows nevertheless that the information is important. Dimitri swallows a mouthful of blood and raises his hand, and the boy screws his eyes shut, bracing for a blow.

Dimitri's hand comes to a rest lightly atop the boy's head. The shape of his skull seems very small beneath his fingers. The sun is very warm on the gleaming metal of Dimitri's gauntlets and on the tousled oak-brown of the boy's hair.

He pats gently. Once. Twice. The boy's eyes squint open, incredulous with relief. No doubt he has heard the rumors about the mad, violent creature in the guise of a prince - most of them gratuitously gory, and most of them true. The boy stammers something and as soon as Dimitri's hand retreats, ducks his head and skitters across the courtyard to some safer place.

Dimitri stares after the boy and still can't name - refuses to name - the feeling that expands in the cavity of his chest, both sodden and light as snow.

His hand curls back into a fist at his side, and his fingertips burn.


	4. iv. Fhirdiad, 1187

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here is the non-angsty denouement, you earned it!!

It's surreal.

Even now, two years after the end of the war, it's surreal to him, like a dream from which he could wake at any moment. Thin afternoon light falls softly through the windows, splaying across Dimitri and the love of his life as they sit sharing tea.

The idea that he could possibly deserve this - he, being who he is, having done what he's done - it's ludicrous, and yet here he is, working tirelessly to become worthy of it with every day that passes, though the endeavor may take the rest of his life yet.

Maybe he will never feel worthy of it. And maybe that's okay, as long as he has Byleth to take his hand and rub a thumb across his knuckles, tell him that he's thinking too loudly. To silence his restless mind with one of those sweet, chaste kisses of which he will never have had too many.

It can be difficult, even now, to picture the two of them in the future. Dimitri spent so long with his mind tunneled to a single point; the part of him capable of wanting something more, of _imagining_ something more, was smothered in its infancy. He cannot remember being unaware of the fact he woul die young. His life had a defined endpoint - except one day, very suddenly, it didn't.

Existence felt tremulous for weeks upon weeks, after that. Sometimes Byleth's hand in his was the only thing reminding him he was truly alive.

But now - now. Like a fledgling stretching its wings, he is fumbling his way into the luxury of allowing himself to wonder. To hope. To dream. Moments watching Byleth's elegant profile, the soft fall of mint-green hair. Indulging in thoughts of the shape their life together might take, seeing as it seemed to be showing no intention of stopping.

So it shouldn't come as such a surprise to him, really, when Byleth broaches the topic. Over afternoon tea, cup raised to sip, as flat-toned as ever and as casual as if asking about the weather: "So. Have you ever thought about... children?"

Dimitri chokes on his tea.

What follows is an embarrassing amount of coughing. He thinks some of the chamomile might have gone up his nose. Byleth looks faintly alarmed, puts a steadying hand on his arm and adds, "...We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, of course, I just - "

Dimitri coughs one final time into his fist, waves away the concern. In truth -

In truth...

He has thought about it. The idea is more than a little bit frightening. His memories of his own parents are fragmented; he has no living relatives to which he could turn for guidance. Byleth could undoubtedly be a wonderful parent, but would be just as unmoored in that regard. And then there was the fact that his own instability had once made him think a family was utterly out of the question - it's been a long journey to feel safe, touching what he loves. And besides that... besides that -

Byleth's thumb traces a comforting path across the back of his palm. Dimitri takes a deep, centering breath that only snags a little in his chest.

He _has_ thought about it. There's a gentleness in him that Byleth is so good at drawing out - and maybe it wouldn't be enough to nurture and protect a vulnerable life, but he would have Byleth alongside him to figure it all out. Together they could build the kind of home neither of them was ever able to have; safe and stable and domestic, drenched in light.

He has also thought about, many times over the years: the children he and Byleth trained in swordplay. The child with ash and blood in their hair. The boy he met so briefly who jolted him from his rage and grief, if only for a moment.

The boy he once was, lost and alone and shell-shocked in a world that had turned its teeth on him.

He clears his throat. Turns his hand over so he can squeeze Byleth's back, anchor himself for what he is about to say.

"Actually," he replies, and his voice wavers only a little, and not because he is uncertain about what he has to say, "actually... I was thinking we could adopt."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (responsibility to carry on the royal bloodline whom? i don't know her)
> 
> (also yes, i did carefully avoid referring to Byleth with any pronouns. take that however you wish!)
> 
> hmu on tumblr @ [aphel1on](https://aphel1on.tumblr.com) for more crying over dimitri and, hopefully, more chatter about upcoming fics.

**Author's Note:**

> (this chapter was supposed to be less angsty than this but, well. Well)


End file.
